Window 8 SSD DEFRAG

[UserX]

Just a heads up.

I have discovered, what I believe to be, a bug in Windows 8 that I felt I should make SSD users aware of. If I go to the “Optimize and defragment drive” and click the Optimize option, Windows will run the TRIM command just fine as long as you have ran the Windows Experience Index at least once. Most people are aware of the above but I have also found, on my system, that Windows 8 “Automatic Maintenance” does not follow the same rules and will defrag and consolidate the SSDs on a schedule.

You can get to the Automatic Maintenance option by:
Control Panel>Action Center>
Click the down arrow on the right under the "Maintenance" heading
From here you can run it and test or turn off the schedule.

I have found this to be true in RAID 0 but have not been able to test with a single SSD.

Note:
I am not sure if the Automatic Maintenance is on by default. It was active on my PC.

[Nodens]

Automatic Maintenance is on by default. Thing is that it should not defragment but optimize instead if the drive is flagged as SSD by winsat (WEI). Are you absolutely sure that it does defragmentation? How did you verify this?

[UserX]

I opened the Optimize panel to see if it was trimming and found it to be defragging and consolidating. It was
running several passes.

[tistou77]

With Windows 8, defrag for SSD, it's a TRIM 😉

[UserX]

When I ran the Automatic Maintenance and opened the Optimization window I noticed that it was not Trimming the drive but rather defragging it. If I run the Optimize option it TRIM's as it should.

Running Optimize is fast and runs a TRIM command.

Running Automatic maintenance defragged the drives with several passes and the HDD light was on solid for several minutes

At least this is the case that I ran into with a fresh EFI installation of Windows 8 X64 Pro onto my 2 SSDs in RAID 0. BIOS v3404

[Nodens]

This is rather weird:/ Try this:

Go to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore
and delete everything inside. Then from an admin command prompt do a "winsat formal" let it finish and check again if it behaves the same way.
Also check if there are any errors in C:\Windows\performance\WinSAT\winsat.log after running "winsat formal".

[Melting_Point]

Nodens wrote:
This is rather weird:/ Try this:

Go to C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore
and delete everything inside...

I'm sure what Nodens meant to say was "and move everything in that folder to another folder, just incase you need to put it back later"

😉

[UserX]

Melting Point wrote:
I'm sure what Nodens meant to say was "and move everything in that folder to another folder, just incase you need to put it back later"

😉

That is exactly what I did, in a folder on my Desktop.

[UserX]

OK, done.
Found 2 Errors:
5900207 (4204) - exe\processwinsaterror.cpp:0146: ERROR: tried to read resource strings, unknown exception occured
6090981 (4204) - exe\processwinsaterror.cpp:0319: Writing exit code, cant msg and why msg to registry

It did not defrag this time it didn't even TRIM. It did analyze the drives. Is there a way to reset the optimize flag as my system says last run 0 days or I can try it again in a couple of days and see what it does.

P.S.
Thank you Nodens for the help.

[Nodens]

Those files in there are the results of WinSAT. You can delete them perfectly fine. It is the same thing as doing a "clear previous results and rerate system" although manually deleting them makes sure they're actually gone so we don't have to troubleshoot if they're gone or not.

Putting them back will make WinSAT think those results are fine (which they 're not apparently :p) and you have somekind of issue because WinSAT is not supposed to give any errors.

Open an admin command prompt, do a "sfc /scannow". Btw those errors sound like you are not running in admin command prompt. Make sure you put the mouse on the bottom left corner of the screen and right click, from that menu choose "Command Prompt (Admin)". Both "sfc /scannow" and "winsat formal" after that should be run from there. When winsat finishes, reboot before you test optimize. (Also reboot before running Winsat formal if sfc told you that it found errors and fixed them).